"Speak for yourself, Elder!" I cried. "I'd give most of this life that I know about and all of the next that you don't, to be for a little while in Roger's shoes! Understand that!" And brushing by him and utterly neglecting Sue and the Wolcott Searses, I jumped into a waiting cab and hurried away from that departing vessel, with two-thirds of what I loved in the world on her deck. I took one last look at our old rooms, bare and clean, now, for my things were sold and Roger's stored; I gave all my clothes to the house valet, to his intense gratitude, and when, with a nervous blow of my favourite cane--a gift from Roger--in an effort to beat the pile of cloth on the floor into symmetrical shape, the stick broke in the middle, I came as near to an hysterical laugh as I ever came in my life. "Take all the other sticks, Hodgson," I said huskily, "and the racquets, if you want them. And give the rod to the night porter--Richard fishes, I know. And take the underwear, too--yes, all of it!" "And the trunk, sir? Where would you wish----" "O Lord, take the trunk!" I burst out, for the familiar labels, ay, the very dints in the brass lock, carried only sour memories to me, now. "But, sir, you've only what you stand in!" the man cried, convinced, I am certain, that I contemplated suicide. "I've got the day to get through, Hodgson," I reassured him, "and the shops will be of great assistance!" I left him gloating over his windfall, and plunged into haberdashery. Fortunately for my nervous loathing of all my old possessions, I had celebrated Uncle Win's legacy by a prompt visit to my tailor, and the results of this visit went far to stock the new leather trunk that I recklessly purchased for the shocking price such commodities command in America. At the end of a successfully costly day I registered myself, the trunk, with its brilliant identification label, a new silver-topped blackthorn, and the best bull terrier I could get in New York, at the new monster hotel I had never before entered, with a strange feeling of an identity as new as my overcoat. This terrier, by the way, marked my definite division from Roger more than anything else could have done. I have always been fond of animals, dogs especially, and as a little fellow was never without some ignominiously bred cur at my heels; but Roger never cared for them, and little by little I had dropped the attempt to keep one, since he objected to exercising them in town, did not care to bother with them in the country, and absolutely refused to endure the encumbrance of one while travelling. Not that he was ever cruel or careless: when thrown into necessary relations with animals he was far more just and thoughtful of them than many a sentimental animal lover of my acquaintance! Strangely enough, I have never seen a dog or cat that would not go to him in preference to almost anyone else--one of nature's ironies.